Washington legislature scrutinizes childcare deaths

SEATTLE — Lawmakers
are considering a bill that would require formal investigations at child
care centers when a death occurs, even if the child appears to have
died from natural causes.

The proposal is named for a 5-month-old
girl who died last year while napping in a Seattle home day care center
where another death occurred in similar circumstances more than a decade
earlier.

Eve Uphold's parents, who have since moved away from
Washington, testified last week before the House Early Learning and
Human Services Committee.

Kyle Uphold said they were told in May 2013 their daughter died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome or SIDS.

When
they conducted their own investigation, they discovered the day care
center in a North Seattle neighborhood had been cited by the state for
safety violations. They also learned another baby had died there years
earlier. Their own child had been left unattended for about an hour in a
waterproof portable crib with a loose cover.

Parents who brought
their children to the center, which closed after Eve died and it lost
its state license, should have been told about the previous problems to
prevent something like this from happening, Amanda Uphold said on
Thursday.

House
Bill 2165 would require the Department of Early Learning to conduct a
child-fatality review for any death in a licensed child care center, a
licensed child care home, or an Early Childhood Education and Assistance
Program.

The bill was passed out of the House committee on
Monday. It will be reviewed by a budget committee before it can go
before the full House and then potentially move on to the Senate.

Fatality reviews would apply for any death —whether the cause was negligence, abuse, homicide or an apparent natural cause.

SIDS
is a major cause of death for children 2 and under in child-care
settings. Many of these deaths are preventable if the staff follows safe
sleep rules, which are taught to every licensed child-care provider,
according to committee and department staff.

Kagi said she was
inspired to propose the bill by Eve's story and because of her
experience sitting on fatality-review committees for the state's foster
care system.

Children protected by other state departments are
already subject to these mandatory reviews, and the foster-care system
was able to improve its safety record because of them, Kagi said.

Andy
and Barbara Hazard also testified before the committee last week. Their
son, Graham, died in 2001 in the same day care center where Eve died.

"It
didn't occur to us to question or challenge the circumstances or the
particular daycare provider," Andy Hazard said. "She had taken care of
our older son, Noah. We felt like she was a member of our family."

A dozen years later, when they heard of Eve's death, Barbara Hazard said, she felt a tremendous amount of guilt.

"No
other parent ought to feel that way," she said. "We naively trusted the
system, and we felt everything that needed to be done had been done."

Stu
Jacobson of Washington Parents for Safe Child Care spoke in favor of
the bill and said some existing laws could improve child safety if they
were better enforced, including one requiring posting of notices when
childcare centers are inspected and found out of compliance with
required safety practices.

Jacobson also would like to see a rule
requiring parents be given a safety checklist when they enroll their
child so they know what to look for.

A child-care litigation
consultant who used to work for Washington state's Department of Social
and Health Services spoke against the bill at last week's hearing.

Margo
Logan said this problem should be overseen by a state agency other than
the Department of Early Learning because it forces that agency to split
its mission between mentoring child care providers and regulating them.
She said the bill could also be rewritten to put more legal
responsibility on the state.

"There doesn't need to be a law. We have laws. The laws aren't being enforced," she added.